[godfreyantonell]

Nice comment. I am in my 50's and a sysadmin for a large corporation. I absolutely love helping people when I can. I am gifted so that I can give. When I'm gone it won't be long before I'm completely forgotten. That's the way it is. Anyone who is finding life too bleak would do well to seek professional help.

[sangnoir]

> When I'm gone it won't be long before I'm completely forgotten.

_Everyone_ will be completely forgotten. I think the obsession with "legacy" is a fools errand. Making a positive impact yo those around you, big or small, _for the sake of it_ is a more reasonable approach, IMO.

Even the most successful person will be forgotten[1] within a few generations.

1. Forgotten as a person, but possibly reduced to a name and a title without knowing eye color or personality.

[Hallucinaut]

I think we're the first generations where this won't be true actually. Micro-documenting your life and opinions, where overtly on Twitter, pseudo-anonymously here, or in emails and countless mobile photos and videos will add historical colour we can only dream of for past generations.

[sangnoir]

> I think we're the first generations where this won't be true actually

The jury is still out, but I wouldn't bet against entropy. Cloud companies do not yet have a clear guidance on what to do with data belonging to deceased users, but if that data is not profitable, it'll likely be deleted[1]. Phones and NAS devices will end up in the attic or landfill: sure programmer-archeologists of the future may encounter some with partially recoverable files, but most of the present day data will be lost.

1. I missed a payment to a SaaS provider by a week (I was traveling) and irrevocably lost data. When the payments stop due to infirmity or death, the data will be deleted.